Guanfacine is also an alternative, and it's method of action also makes it anxiety reducing.
I need the higher doses, so I'm practically screwed. Makes me so damn frustrated, cause I'm 4-5 months down without meds and I'm REALLY STRUGGLING. Depression, zero motivation, practically no executive function. Really needs to be accountability on these companies to ensure they can supply.
Edit: Oh also want to mention that I generally prefer privacy oriented apps - so if there is something, even paid, that will keep my notes on device without sharing them with a server I'd love to hear about it.
I'm on an iPhone and I use Streaks https://apps.apple.com/us/app/streaks/id963034692 . I really dig it. It's easy to set up, easy to add or pause tasks, and easy to correct past mistakes (I often forget to record I took my meds even though I can see I remembered by looking at my pill organizer, fixing this takes a couple taps).
You can configure it to remind you to do a task N days a week. I use this feature to track checking the mail. You can also make a daily task and configure it with a "2 day rule" that gives you a little wiggle room. I want to read a book and practice chess every day but sometimes I miss a day -- this rule lets me miss one day but not two days in a row.
It's well designed with lots of color choices and icons for each task, plus it has Apple watch support. I'm pretty sure it's all entirely offline other than backups to iCloud, which can be disabled.
Finally, it's a one time purchase. If it wasn't I wouldn't have given it a try.
And for someone who likes to "work on their productivity", it's a never ending swamp of plugins and optimising data views and reports.
I just switched to Things3 and couldn't be happier. It has very little customisation and options. It just lets me write down my TODO-lists.
anyone from India willing to share some pointers on how to get an evaluation
signed - someone who has been procrastinating on it for a few years now
It helped. I do. That was it!
Some primary care doctors will refer you to get proper testing, but many will either ask you a subset of the questions you took on the questionnaire and say “yeah you have it,” or ask you nothing further and say “no you don’t have it,” depending entirely on their personal feelings on the matter. Testing isn’t cheap if your insurance doesn’t cover it but if you work in a knowledge field, being informed is an investment.
Medication, if it makes sense for treatment goes beyond controlling attention to tasks at a higher level — like not getting squirrel brain distracted trying to code. It also has much lower-level cognitive effects that I can’t directly perceive, but are completely obvious looking at my raw capability. A modest dosage of methylphenidate makes complex math problems that previously made me drop classes after putting in 20 hours per week of hyper-focused study time effortless. I don’t ‘feel’ smarter on it, or dumber off it— I can’t even perceive the specific threads of thought getting derailed in my normal state that make some cognitive tasks so difficult. The proof is entirely in my ability to do things that were incredibly difficult before.
Barring any of this, regular physical activity and good sleep have huge benefits. For some, it increases the dopamine enough to make medication totally unnecessary. I see dramatically worse results if I get super busy and drop sleep and gym visits staying up late working.
But seriously, getting medicated absolutely changed my life.
https://contentmanager.med.uvm.edu/docs/default-source/ahec-...
The DSM-V criteria are also available on the CDC website.
Important notes: many of these symptoms, if acute rather than chronic, can be part of depression or anxiety which is suspected to be part of the dopamine deficit. If that’s true, you likely won’t get any neuropsychological testing because they’ll probably go away when you the base conditions. ADHD is something that would have been affecting you significantly since childhood. Also, other things can affect executive functioning like Autism Spectrum Disorder and Tourette’s (which usually manifests itself with ticks that don’t involve swearing loudly, despite its reputation in pop culture... they’re often not vocal at all.)